Miscellanies.

A collection of essays and criticism from this Baltimore physician, though only one piece is given over to his native American literature and that examined rather abstractly in comparison to the literature of England; Collins does have sufficient insight to note, “Englishmen write better books than Americans, for the same reason that they make better cutlery and cloths; they receive compensation for their labor.” Collins also devote a chapter to the career of Dickens in the wake of his recent visit to the U.S., speculating whether Dickens’ career will last; in the course of his criticism of Dickens, he turns his eye to contemporary novelists working in a similar vein and dealing with low-life characters, casting some aspersions on “Felon Literature—a species of writing so common in the present day.”.